Cape For Hire
by jacobk
Summary: Taylor Hebert intends to become a hero on her own terms. If everybody else thinks her terms are a little odd, well, that's why she never asked their opinion anyway.
1. Chapter 1

AN: I have ideas. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're more like this.

ooOoo

Brockton Bay's hospital system was as run down and neglected as the rest of the city. The equipment available was usually out of date and most of the rooms could use a new coat of paint. Still, thanks to the periodic efforts of local hero Panacea, at least the long term care wards weren't overcrowded. It was this fact more than the quality of her father's medical insurance that allowed Taylor Hebert the use of a private room as she recuperated from her latest ordeal.

She had been in a coma for over a week, and still tended to drift in and out of consciousness irregularly. The gown that had been issued to her was thin, doing little to conceal a figure that was as flat as the bed she occupied.

"Hey!" Taylor complained, speaking to nobody in particular while glaring up at the ceiling.

Taylor had a lot of anger to deal with in light of recent events. She had been shoved into her school locker and left to stew in a melange of used tampons and other assorted biological waste. She had cut herself rather badly trying to get out, which would have led to a serious infection if she hadn't developed superpowers. The good news was that her super strength had allowed her to break out of the locker and her healing factor had taken care of the infection. The bad news was that her new super-healing had super-charged her previously dormant face cancer.

"Face cancer isn't even a thing," Taylor muttered sullenly, drawing on the no doubt impressive medical knowledge possessed by a high school sophomore who had barely managed passing marks in biology. "Whatever."

Anyways, the result was an endless cycle: the cancer ravaged her face, before her healing factor fixed the damage, then the cancer struck back, and so on. As a result she'd be wearing a mask whether her not she decided to pursue a career as a costumed vigilante. Also, the constant pain had driven her just a little bit insane. She had even adopted the habit of speaking in response to her imaginary friend, the narrator.

"I'd rather hang out with the little yellow boxes, but I make do."

Poor girl doesn't even know what she's saying. As if her life would turn into a comic book just because she had resolved to put on a costume and fight crime. Honestly, a quick glance down at the unobstructed view of her toes would rule out the work of any of the major illustrators.

"That's just uncalled for," Taylor said, startling the nurse who had just stepped into the room. "Can we skip to the good part already?"

 **ooO The Adventures of Taylor Hebert, the Maid with the Mouth Ooo**

Three months later, Taylor was walking along the streets of Brockton Bay late at night. She was wearing the finest costume $34.75 could buy, which was... pretty nice, actually. Brockton Bay's thrift stores stocked a surprisingly wide variety of lightly used cape outfits. Taylor had picked out her current duds in large part because the soothing red color hid any stains left behind by its previous owner. The pullover full face mask was a nice touch, and spandex was pretty much one size fits all. She'd been able to fix the rips and tears herself, which saved enough money that she was able to splurge on a barely used katana that had been tucked away with a bunch of old golf clubs.

She was currently swinging the katana in front of herself, engaging imaginary foes with skillful display of swordsmanship that was only slightly undercut by her insistence on producing lightsaber sound effects with every strike.

There actually wasn't enough street crime at Brockton Bay that you could reliably walk around and run into some. Taylor had managed to keep her behavior somewhat normal for the first half hour of her patrol, then only slightly eccentric for the next half hour, and then... more so. Of course, nobody liked to call capes crazy to their face, so she could probably still get away with describing herself as eccentric.

Still, all the lightsaber sound effects in the world couldn't change the fact that this was pretty boring.

"Hey, it beats going to school," Taylor said, addressing the empty street. A man who had been filming her with his cell phone looked over to confirm there was nobody there before shutting down his phone and hurrying away.

She was right, though. Going to school with a disfiguring injury while maintaining her secret identity and resisting the urge to send anybody to the hospital was a matter of tedium and convenient coincidences that didn't really bear thinking about. Best not to dwell on it at all, really.

It was a little disappointing for her first attempt at superheroing to come up empty. If only she had known of the momentous event that was transpiring a mere three blocks north and one block west of her current location...

"Thanks!" Taylor called out, sheathing her katana and breaking into a jog headed south. She stopped and spun around. "I knew that!"

Taylor hurried on, guided by the unerring instincts of a true hero. When she rounded the corner she saw a large group of men dressed in the colors of the Azn Bad Boys, one of the major local gangs. They were drawn up in a half circle around the towering form of a man who had to be their leader. He was wearing a metal mask to hide his identity, and seemed to be finishing up a speech of some kind.

"...the children, just shoot. Doesn't matter your aim, just shoot. You see one lying on the ground? Shoot the little bitch twice more to be sure. We give them no chances to be clever or lucky, understand?"

There was a murmur of assent as Taylor strode into earshot.

"Or you could try not shooting anybody. I think that's a better plan," she called out. The gang swiveled around as one while their leader's eyes rose to meet Taylor's. Acting on an unspoken signal, the gang member nearest her pulled out a pistol and shot at her, putting four rounds center mass. Taylor didn't break stride as she kept moving forward and in one smooth move drew her katana and swung it up, diagonally bisecting the man who had shot at her. The gang stopped to stare as his top half slid down to plop on the ground next to his bottom half.

"The no shooting plan is looking better now, right?"

The rest of the gang disagreed, choosing instead to start firing at her en masse. Taylor sighed and went to work. She was strong enough now that the kinetic impact from the bullets didn't even slow her down. The damage they did in penetrating her body wasn't enough to impede her functionality even before her healing factor kicked in, and the pain was nothing compared to the cancer constantly eating away at her. As a result she waded through the gang members more or less unimpeded, removing whichever limbs were most convenient at the time. When she finished she was newly grateful for the red coloring of her uniform. As the last gang member fell to the ground, she turned to look at their leader and blinked in surprise.

He had been big before. Now he was at least a foot taller than he had been and covered in silvery scales. His proportions were more beast than man, and he howled wordlessly in rage while an aura of fire built up around him.

"What? They shot at me first," Taylor said, a little defensive. "I was very clear about being an advocate of not shooting anybody."

Taylor wondered idly what the man's name was and if this was the extent of his power. She hadn't done much research before heading out. As far as she could tell she was indestructible, and part of her would welcome the sweet relief of death. Accordingly, her plan was to find bad guys who needed swording, and then apply sword to said bad guys until the problem was solved. The particulars of her opponent's power didn't really affect her plan much, but she was a little curious.

Whoever he was, he was not placated by her logic and charged forward, arms outstretched as though he was offering her a hug. Taylor crouched down, grinning slightly as she held her katana low by her side. Just before mister big, scaly, and flamey was able to grab on to her, she took a quick step forward inside his reach. The heat was painful but not debilitating as she brought her sword up in a two handed strike. It hit just above his hip and the blade snapped off with a ping.

Taylor stared at the stub of a weapon in shock, holding it at eye level in her left hand. The gang leader's claws took her hand off at the wrist and sent her stumbling backwards, but Taylor hardly reacted to the strike.

"How is that possible," she whispered. "My katana... it was folded over 1000 times..."

Her opponent had lost his mask at some point. His face was covered with scales as the rest of him was, and had shifted away from anything human. It was still clear enough that he was grinning at her.

"'eeabo," he growled out, struggling to form words.

"What?" Taylor asked, unable to look away from his eyes. In response a hand the size of a dinner plate smashed into her chest, sending her flying to smash into the brick wall of a boarded up shop.

He turned and walked over to a pile of rubble, fishing through it as Taylor sat where she had fallen, propped up against the wall. Her healing factor would have her on her feet in a couple of minutes, but she doubted she would have that much time. She watched as he fished her hand out of the pile, prying loose its grip on the hilt of what remained of her sword. With the fight won he was shrinking back down to his original appearance.

"I said, I can't believe my men were killed by a fucking weeaboo," he growled, striding towards her. "A katana is just a sharpened piece of metal, not some kind of magic light saber."

Taylor looked up, glaring at the man now standing only a couple of feet away from her. "Doesn't it dishonor your ancestors to talk like that?"

His response was to bring the remaining half of the sword around to neatly decapitate her. Taylor experienced an odd shift in perspective as her head separated from her body, bouncing a few times before settling in with a view of her opponent. She continued glaring at him, wishing that her superpowers had included the ability to kill with a look.

At that moment, some kind of giant demon creature crashed into him. The two of them tumbled out of her field of view. Taylor blinked. She blinked again, then wished that her superpowers included the ability to summon eye candy from the sky.

Another of the demonic creatures landed in her field of view. This one was carrying two people. As they dismounted, Taylor could see that they were both capes. The leader seemed to be the big guy in black motorcycle leathers, while the blonde girl in lavender spandex seemed like more of a support type. The two of them took a moment to survey the charnel house the alley had been turned into.

"This guy really did a number on the ABB," the big guy said. "Too bad we didn't get here in time to help him out."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," the blonde replied.

A moment later Taylor saw what she had been looking at, as her body staggered into view. It was reaching out with its hands, patting gingerly at the surface of the road. As she watched it reached a rock that was roughly head sized, picking it up and placing it on its neck. When nothing happened it threw the rock away in frustration, leading it to bounce off the wall and roll back near its feet. When her body started forward again, it stopped when it reached the rock.

Taylor would have sighed, if she had lungs.

The blonde girl took a few steps forward and picked her head up by the hair. It didn't really hurt, but the swinging sensation was disorienting. It was a tremendous relief when she felt herself placed once more atop her shoulders. It didn't take long for her body to heal up the cut. Taylor tested it out with a cautious roll of her neck, then turned to face her saviors.

"Thanks," she said.

At some point a second demon thing had landed and dislodged another two capes before leaping off to dogpile on the gang leader. One of them, a boy in a white mask and a Renaissance fair outfit, called out to her.

"Always happy to lend a hand," he said, waving Taylor's missing appendage in the air.

Taylor nodded gratefully and held up her other hand to receive his toss. "I'll try to keep my head next time."

The boy in white seemed to appreciate her sense of humor. The rest of the Undersiders seemed unamused.

"The Undersiders, huh?"

The blonde girl did a double take, looking back at the empty air over the ren faire guy's shoulder and back at Taylor. Their leader had crossed his arms over his chest, made a little defensive by her tone.

"You have a problem with us?"

"What, no," Taylor protested. "It's just that after that cool entrance I thought your name would be a little more, well, cool."

"Everyone's a critic," he replied. Taylor couldn't see his face, but she had the feeling he was rolling his eyes. "What's your name, then?"

Taylor brought her newly reattached left hand up to scratch the back of her head. "I haven't thought of one yet, actually. I was thinking though, my power let me master the use of a bunch of different weapons really quickly, so I might go with Armsmaster."

The four Undersiders just stared at her for a moment. It was Tattletale who broke the silence.

"That name's taken."

"Seriously? Maybe I should go for something less fancy. With my healing factor I can charge straight at people, so I could call myself Assault."

"That's... also taken."

"Well, poo," Taylor said. "Lucky you that Tattletale was available."

Tattletale flinched, looking over her shoulder and then back at Taylor. She seemed like she wanted to say something, but caught herself and just shook her head.

"Look, we don't have a lot of time. Do you want a ride out of here?"

The question was deceptively simple. Leaving with the Undersiders would be tantamount to joining up with the group of villains. For all that they were basically decent people, driven to lives of crime by circumstances beyond their control, this was not a decision to make lightly. Taylor wanted to be a hero. Joining the Undersiders would start a game of cat and mouse with their mysterious employer. It would take all of her cunning to come out of it with her life-and her conscience-intact.

Taylor blinked. "You guys up for a redemption arc?"

"A what?" Tattletale asked.

"You know, we get to know each other, talk about our tragic backstories, come to the realization that crime doesn't pay?"

"We... we're really out of time. We'll talk to you later."

The other female member of the group, who until this point had remained silent, suddenly gave a short, sharp whistle. The demon things bounded over to form up in front of the Undersiders, who mounted with practiced ease. They bounded up on top of a nearby roof and were soon out of sight.

Taylor looked over at the injured gang leader. He looked somewhat chewed on, but his injuries were visibly healing up as she watched. She didn't really fancy her chances in a rematch.

Before Taylor could leg it, a motorcycle rounded the corner. It was obviously heavily modified to support the man riding it. He was clad in some serious looking power armor that only left enough of his face visible for Taylor to make out a sweet goatee.

He fired a pair of darts at the downed gang leader while Taylor was evaluating his facial hair. When they struck home the man fell backwards, out like a light. The motorcycle jostled slightly as it bounced over the ABB body parts littering the alley before coming to a stop next to Taylor.

"This your work?"

Somehow it hadn't occurred to Taylor that dismembering a dozen people might be frowned upon by the local law enforcement.

"It's not like my sword came with a stun setting," she grumbled.

"You know," he said, "if you joined the Wards we could provide you with non-lethal takedown options."

"Then I'd have to stop killing people?" Taylor asked. Non-lethal fighting seemed like it would be much less effective as stress relief.

"We'd really prefer that you stop killing people either way," he said, then sighed. "What's your name, anyway?"

"I'm still trying to figure that out," Taylor admitted. "All of the good ones seem to be taken. Although... my power does come with a strong healing factor that lets me keep fighting no matter what, so how about 'Dauntless'?"

Armsmaster gave her a flat look. "I'm afraid that name is taken."

"Gah!" Taylor said, throwing her arms up in disgust. "Everything's taken. You took my first choice!"

"How so?"

"I'm really good with weapons... a master even," Taylor explained. "And most of them involve using my arms. It's a perfect fit."

"Sorry," Armsmaster said. He didn't sound sorry. "We do have a good PR department that could help you come up with something if you join the Wards."

"I'm not really much of a joiner," Taylor said. "I want to make sure my name's on the cover. You win more fights that way, you know?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Besides, if I stay independent it'll be a big deal when we team up," Taylor said, giving him a thumbs up. "More reviews that way."

"The Wards receive performance reviews," Armsmaster said. He spoke slowly and a little warily, like he was talking to a crazy person. Taylor had long since stopped caring about things like that, having firmly developed the opinion that questions of sanity shouldn't be up for majority vote.

In this case she was probably right. There weren't too many things that could happen to a Ward that she would find interesting, and the question of how she would react when she discovered that Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker would just hang over everything.

"Wait, what?" Taylor exclaimed.

"What?" Armsmaster asked.

"What?"

"If you say what again..."

"You'll what?" Taylor asked, genuinely curious.

Armsmaster pulled his halberd from where it was holstered alongside his motorcycle, and glared at her for a long moment. With a growl, he turned away and accelerated to where the gang leader was lying unconscious on the ground. He slid his halberd under the man and used it to flip him up to lie across the motorcycle seat, then wheeled around and hit the accelerator, leaving rubber tracks as he flew out of the alley.

Taylor looked after him as she stood alone in the alley, having driven both hero and villain away through simple exposure to her personality.

"It's a gift."

ooOoo


	2. Chapter 2

AN: New perspectives broaden your horizons

ooOoo

 _Coil sat behind his desk, calmly regarding his guests. Tattletale and Taylor. Two of the more dangerous capes in Brockton Bay, albeit for different reasons. The two girls were seated on cheap folding chairs, while Coil had a rather luxurious leather office chair. It was a rather pedestrian power play, but stll effective. The fact that they were located in an underground bunker that he personally controlled in the heart of Brockton Bay really drove the point home._

 _Coil had to keep his feet planted solidly on the ground in order to resist the temptation to spin himself from side to side. He was something of a natural fidgeter, which wasn't really congruent with his image as a criminal mastermind. In order to keep up his facade he found it helped to actively focus on doing something that didn't involve moving. To that end he had his fingers steepled dramatically in front of his face. He sometimes wished he had a cat that he could hold on his lap for this kind of thing, but he frankly didn't trust most of his men around animals._

 _"Before you officially begin working for me, there is one final test," Coil said. He reached into his desk drawer and withdrew a pistol, setting it down in front of him. "In the room next door is a seven year old child. I want you to kill him."_

 _There were many reasons to put somebody through a test like that. If they were going to balk at his orders, better to find out now than when something important was on the line. If they went through with it, having such a heinous deed on their conscience would make them unwilling to go to the police. Just going through the experience served as a sort of hazing ritual that bonded people together. And, of course, thanks to his unique ability Coil was able to learn about people by putting them into high stress situations for his own amusement._

 _"Okie-dokie."_

 _He wasn't sure exactly what he had been expecting from Ms. Hebert, but cheerful acquiescence wasn't it. He watched her pick up the pistol and practically skip out of the room, then directed a meaningful gaze at Tattletale. Her report hadn't suggested this level of casual bloodlust from his newest acquisition. She shrugged, suggesting that the behavior was as much of a surprise to her as it was to him. Or at least that was what she wanted him to think. Dealing with Tattletale could be a real headache sometimes._

 _A gunshot rang out from the next room. Then another. Then another. Then some kind of rhythmic banging noise, then the sound of a scuffle, and finally another gunshot. A moment later Taylor strolled back into the room._

 _"That gun you gave me was loaded with blanks, so I had to beat the kid to death with his chair," Taylor said. "Your guard tried to interfere, so I had to kill him too. His gun worked fine, though."_

 _Now that she mentioned it, the gun she was spinning around her finger was a different model than the one he had given her. Coil was still trying to calculate how to react to this behavior when Tattletale jumped in._

 _"You killed an innocent child! How could you?"_

 _"I used to babysit for pocket money. There are no innocent children," Taylor said, losing her cheerful attitude for a moment before brightening up. "Besides, killing people is fun. Usually you get in trouble but when everything's all italicized it's open season!"_

 _Tattletale just stood there, shocked. Taylor walked over and laid a friendly hand on her shoulder._

 _"Look, Lis, you're way too stressed out. Let's play a game I like to call: Taking Turns Shooting Each Other in the Face," Taylor said. "The way it works is that we take turns shooting each other in the face. I'll go first."_

 _Before Tattletale could say anything Taylor brought her pistol up and shot her, right between the eyes. The report was deafening in the small room, and something about seeing Tattletale's head snap back and watching her body fall lifeless to the floor snapped Coil into action. Not that it wasn't satisfying to watch, but it wasn't quite the same when he wasn't pulling the trigger himself. He pulled another pistol out of his desk drawer and stood, drawing a bead on Taylor. She seemed content only to watch for the moment, but he had no idea how long that would last._

 _He knew she couldn't be killed by gunfire, but she had been inconvenienced when Lung chopped off her head. Accordingly he did his best to do as much damage to her head as possible, firing until the trigger clicked on an empty chamber. He had only managed to back away two paces before her face reconstructed itself, the pings of bullets hitting the floor as they were expelled from her healing body ringing loud in the silence after his gunfire._

 _"Not bad!" Taylor said. "You're only supposed to fire once per turn, though. Here, let me show you."_

ooOoo

Coil dropped the timeline and found himself sitting alone in his office, secure in a world where he had had only tangential contact with Taylor Hebert. This recruitment was turning into more trouble than it was worth. Every time he tried to bring Ms. Hebert under his wing, she turned violently insane. Well, more violently insane than usual.

It was almost as if she could tell she was in a throwaway timeline. He shook his head, dismissing the possibility. If Tattletale couldn't figure out his power, there was no way some half-insane brute could have sussed out what was going on. Besides, if she had then she would be biding her time until she could attack him in a timeline he couldn't afford to throw away. No, that couldn't be the explanation.

But if the problem wasn't caused by some interaction between their powers, what could it be?

As Coil mulled over the problem, some advice from his old college roommate drifted across his mind: _Remember, the one constant in all of your failed relationships is you._

He stood from his desk and walked over to the storage closet. Pulling it open, he took a look at himself in the mirror. He was dressed in his usual work outfit: a skin tight black leather suit with a stylized snake wrapping around his body. Could it be that his look was somehow off-putting? Or was there something about his personality that rubbed her the wrong way? It seemed unlikely, but investigating would be easy enough.

ooOoo

 _Coil walked over to his desk and sat down before pressing the intercom button and summoning the man standing guard outside of his office. Seconds later the guard was standing at attention in front of his desk._

 _"Tell me, Mulciber, does anything about me strike you as... creepy?"_

 _Mulciber, a man that Coil knew had put in a full four years of duty guarding the walls of Madison dealing with the horrors left behind in the aftermath of the Simurgh attack, visibly blanched at the question. That wasn't encouraging, but Coil managed to hold back a sigh._

 _"I want your honest opinion. I won't hold anything you say against you in the future," Coil continued. "I really am just trying to identify if I'm doing anything that bothers people."_

 _Mulciber didn't seem to find that reassuring, but after a moment he realized he wasn't going to get out of this._

 _"Well... in what way, sir?"_

 _He was obviously stalling for time. Coil usually would have reprimanded him for that, but it seemed counterproductive._

 _"Just in general," Coil said, gesturing aimlessly, "say, would you recommend me as a babysitter?"_

 _"You recruited a bunch of the lads by finding kids for them to bugger," Mulciber said, "so no, not really."_

 _Coil narrowed his eyes, though the effect was lost through the full face mask he was wearing. "You didn't complain when you received your signing bonus."_

 _"That's fair," Mulciber admitted, "still, it's a little off-putting that you just had that ready to go on request."_

 _Coil's ability made it rather easy for him to provide benefits for his people before they even brought them up in negotiations. It had never occurred to him that doing so might have a negative effect on his image. Still, they were getting far afield. Taylor routinely went crazy well before seeing his base's pediph-aisle._

 _"Set that aside," Coil said. "Suppose you had just walked into the room and didn't know anything else about me."_

 _"The all black outfit isn't very comforting," Mulciber said. "And snakes aren't exactly warm and fuzzy."_

 _"Black is a traditional color for villains, and the snake is a symbol of wisdom and healing in many cultures," Coil said, tugging on his chin as he thought out loud. "But I see what you mean."_

 _Neither man spoke for a long moment. The silence between them seemed somewhat more companionable than it had at the beginning of their conversation. Mulciber had relaxed in his bearing significantly, and was comfortable enough to volunteer his opinion without waiting for another question._

 _"You know, I always thought you were deliberately going for the serial killer vibe," Mulciber said. "Acting like the kind of guy that has all of his ex-girlfriends chopped up in a freezer somewhere, laid out in the order of the breakups. That wasn't intentional?"_

 _"No, not at all," Coil said, still lost in thought. Besides, they were organized by last name._

 _"To be honest, I'm still kind of expecting you to hit a button and drop me in a tank full of piranhas."_

 _"Don't be ridiculous," Coil said. "This has been most enlightening."_

ooOoo

Dropping the timeline where the conversation took place, Coil immediately moved into action. Reaching into a desk drawer, he pulled out one of his most closely guarded possessions: his personal journal. He flipped to the first blank page and started writing after only a moment's thought:

\- To do: practice speaking to (non-kidnapped) teenagers

He stared at the journal contemplatively. He couldn't chew on his pen with his mask on, but he could tap it against his cheek to make little drumming noises. After a moment, he added another entry:

\- To do: arrange installation of trap door and piranha tank

It never hurt to be prepared.

ooOoo


	3. Chapter 3

ooOoo

 _Coil checked his notes immediately after splitting the timeline. He then double-checked his appearance. He was wearing a long trench coat to conceal his cadaverous frame. A bandanna wrapped around his face covered his creepy smile. A last glance around the area confirmed the lack of supervising adults._

 _His notes mentioned that teenage girls were fascinated by the freedom represented by an automobile._

 _Coil stepped out from behind the bushes and approached his target. She turned to face him with some trepidation, so Coil gave his best attempt at a reassuring smile. It was probably for the best that his bandanna hid the resulting expression._

 _"Hey little girl. Do you want to go for a ride in my van?"_

 _The reaction was immediate, albeit unwelcome._

 _"Pervert!"_

The unfortunate thing about teenage girls, Coil thought, feeling a phantom pain even as he dropped the timeline, was that they were at just the right height to strike a man in a very uncomfortable place.

ooOoo

Taylor largely found it a waste of time to attend class at Winslow High. She wouldn't have continued to go except that dealing with the fallout of an attempted expulsion would waste even more of her time.

"Might squeeze a couple chapters out of it, though," Taylor said, showing a poor grasp of the concept of dramatic tension. "Whatever."

The students at Winslow at this point gave her a large berth as she strode down the hallway, so her strange commentary didn't so much cause them to step away from her as it did lead them to intensify their disinterest. Ever since she had punted Madison through a window most students had made a point of avoiding Taylor's notice.

One period that Taylor did enjoy was Miss Knott's computer class. It allowed her to catch up on her reading on PHO. There was a time that Taylor would have done her assignment before browsing the web. That time was the year before she had been stuffed in a locker full of used tampons.

Taylor was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the more active threads on PHO was discussing her debut. The thread included a video of her fight with Lung up until the point where he put her through a wall. Taylor was disappointed to see that most of the discussion was not related to her sweet costume or cool power, but rather focused on insulting her intelligence in her choice of opponents. The thread starter opined that she would likely be dead within a week. The other thread participants didn't seem to give her more than a month to live.

That just wouldn't do. Taylor created a new account before making her first ever post to PHO.

 _Come on, guys, if anything pop culture told me about katanas is true then that attack totally should have worked. I mean, maybe it did work. For all you know I actually cut Lung in half and he just didn't fall apart until after the video cut out._

 _Anyways, I've got twenty bucks that says I survive for at least a year._

 _P.S. I'm still trying to come up with a cape name. I'm thinking with my power I never really lose a fight and I'm kind of young, so "Kid Win" is a good fit. It's kind of lame, but all of the good names are taken._

Message posted, Taylor spent the rest of the class period perusing the cape fiction section of the web site. She did receive a PM from the moderator asking her to describe her conversation with Armsmaster, but a quick one-word reply of "What?" was enough to earn her Verified Cape status without pulling her too far out of the tale of forbidden romance between Rune and Shadow Stalker.

Winslow being what it was, class ended just when she was getting to the good part.

Taylor suffered through the rest of the school day with good grace. Well, she suffered through the rest of the school day, anyway. When it ended she hurried home, eager to get back onto PHO. She was somewhat gratified to see over a thousand responses on what she considered to be "her" thread. She was disappointed to see that "Kid Win" was taken, and even more disappointed that the vast bulk of the discussion was a flame war regarding the relative merits of the katana.

Somewhat more disturbing was the speculation that she might be a new enforcer for Empire 88, Brockton Bay's neo-nazi gang. Apparently some people considered wholesale slaughter to be villainous behavior, and saw Taylor's heroic efforts to be more about fighting for turf than for justice.

"That does it, then," Taylor said, closing out her web browser, "clearly I'm going to have to change my behavior so that people stop saying bad things about me on the internet."

She dressed in her civilian outfit of blue jeans, t-shirt, sweater, and full face mask. That done, she dashed out a quick note to her father before heading out the door.

 _Dad,_

 _Went out for a bit. Don't wait up for me._

 _Love,_

 _Taylor_

 _P.S. Don't worry, I'm not picking any fights with Nazis._

Finding skinheads in the middle of committing a crime was frustratingly difficult. Finding a bunch of skinheads hanging out in front of a bar was much easier. Taylor glanced around the corner to confirm the presence of her prey before pulling back and taking a deep breath to compose herself. There were four of them. Three had the sort of roughneck appearance she usually associated with gang members, while the fourth could have been an accountant if not for his shaved head and gang tattoos.

"Time to implement my brilliant plan," she said, lying to herself.

"Time to implement my ingenious plan," she said, slightly annoyed, and still not within spitting distance of the truth.

"Time to implement my plan," she said, in a technically true statement.

Shaking her head, she pushed down on her irritation and stepped out into the street. She walked about half of the distance between herself and the group of four skinheads before visibly reacting to their presence.

"Oy, vey," she said, dramatically bringing the back of her hand to rest against her forehead. "Nazis!"

She paused, waiting for reaction. She figured with her face covered and her slightly curly hair, there was no reason the skinheads would assume she wasn't Jewish. It's possibly worth mentioning at this juncture that Taylor's primary exposure to Jewish culture came from reruns of Seinfeld.

"That reminds me," Taylor said, "what's the deal with the airline food?"

Somewhat to her surprise, it was the weedy accountant-looking guy who spoke up. "Could you please leave?"

"No! This is a free country, and that means that if I want to stand here and do observational humor, then I will," Taylor said, bringing her hand down to point dramatically at the men, then pausing. "I also do puns."

The three big guys charged her without any further prompting. Taylor suppressed a giggle at the success of her plan. Things hit a minor snag when she realized they had been tugging on her outstretched arm for a while, but she relaxed and let them maneuver it behind her back to be tied up.

"Oh no," Taylor said, "please don't take me to your super-secret Nazi base. Anything but that!"

Things continued according to plan as they threw a bag over her head before tossing her into the trunk of a car. Taylor tried to keep track of where they were going, but it turned out that counting turns was a lot like counting sheep. She was fast asleep long before they arrived at their destination.

She awoke to the sensation of being dragged out of the trunk. She was carried a short distance before being unceremoniously dumped onto a folding metal chair. Her legs were duct taped in place. Taylor could hear several pairs of footsteps walking out of the room, then the sound of a car starting. A moment later the bag over her head was removed, and Taylor found herself face to face with the accountant-looking guy.

"Look, I know you're a cape."

"Aha!" Taylor said, tugging her hands apart, easily ripping the duct tape, "you think you've caught an innocent Jewish girl, but I'm actually-wait, what?"

"We have more men killed by random teenagers than by the ABB and the Merchants combined."

"Seriously?" Taylor asked. Looking around, she could see that they were in a room that looked much more like a rundown warehouse than some kind of secret Nazi base.

"If you want to show you're an edgy vigilante but not too edgy, what else would you do but kill a bunch of Nazis? Face it, kid, you're not the first to think of it."

"Pssh, no, that's not what I was thinking," Taylor said, lying through her teeth. "I just wanted to beat up some Nazis and maybe steal some Nazi super-science."

"Super science? We don't even have a Tinker."

"Man, what a waste," Taylor said, shaking her head. "Wait a minute-if you knew I was a cape, why are you still here?"

"If we run into a teenage cape, the Empire 88 handbook says that one man is supposed to sacrifice himself so the rest can get away. I drew the short straw."

"You know where they went, though?"

"Oh, no," the man said, holding up his hands. "I'm not saying anything."

"Look... what was your name again?"

"Bob," he said.

"Look, Bob, I meant what I said about heading out tonight planning to beat up Nazis. So the question is, am I going to beat up a bunch of Nazis a little bit, or do I put a whole lot of hurting on just one or two Nazis?"

Fifteen minutes later, Taylor kicked down the door to a popular Empire 88 hangout. The door was unlocked, but Taylor thought it was kind of pointless to have super-strength if you didn't use it in this kind of situation. Besides, she liked having everybody's attention on her as she made her entrance.

"Hey guys! Bet you did Nazi this one coming!"

Taylor's "wit" was met by an unimpressed silence.

"You know," she said, glaring around the bar, "you guys have a pretty refined sense of humor for a bunch of skinhead thugs."

One of the men standing at the bar, six foot six if he was an inch, glared right back at her. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."

Taylor suspected that the kindergarten saying may have stuck with the man because it was the highest level of education he'd completed. She held her tongue, though, as she grabbed a bar stool and broke off its leg with a casual tug.

"That works for me."

After a brief interlude of senseless violence, Taylor found herself the last one standing in the middle of a wrecked shambles of a bar. She felt some satisfaction as she surveyed the unconscious skinheads strewn across the floor, but she also felt like something was missing. Sure, she'd knocked a bunch of creeps around, but tomorrow they'd be out interacting with civilized people. Limping a little bit, true, but still basically passing for normal. Their tattoos marked their membership in the gang, but kept that tiny sliver of deniability that kept them out of jail.

Taylor checked the pockets of one of the fallen and smiled when she found a penknife and a cell phone.

Bob looked over her shoulder as she walked out of the bar with her attention focused on the phone. He saw a selfie of Taylor giving a thumbs up alongside the visible face of an Empire 88 member with a still-bleeding swastika carved into his forehead. She was posting it to PHO along with the caption "He did Nazi that one coming!"

"You used that one already," Bob said.

"You know what they say: if a joke's worth telling once, it's worth telling over and over again."

"Nobody says that."

"I say it, Bob. I say it," Taylor said, clapping him on the shoulder. "If you say it too, that makes a 'they' in my book."

"That'll be just down to you by tomorrow," Bob said. "Kaiser'll kill me once he finds out about this."

Taylor looked at Bob in surprise. She found it hard sometimes to remember that other people were worried about things like getting shot. On the one hand, Bob was a Nazi. On the other hand, he had led her to a bunch of other Nazis. She would feel vaguely guilty if he got killed for helping her out.

ooOoo

Danny sat in his armchair completely failing to read the newspaper. He was waiting for his daughter to get home. His perfectly normal daughter. Sure, Taylor had to wear a mask everywhere these days. And sure, her behavior was a little odd every now and then. But if somebody was odd all the time, then being odd was normal, right? In that sense, Taylor was definitely normal. Very normal.

He was drawn out of his thoughts by the creaking of the front steps. He looked at the door and was relieved to see his daughter walk in. He was less relieved when she was followed by a strange man. The guy didn't look particularly threatening, although the shaved head and tattoos weren't exactly what Danny wanted to see in a visitor.

"Hey dad!" Taylor called out on seeing him. "Bob needs a place to lay low for a little while, and we have that empty guest room, so..."

Danny took a deep breath. Perfectly normal. They were a perfectly normal family that did perfectly normal family things.

"I've got meatloaf in the oven. Let's get something to eat before we talk this over."

There wasn't a lot of idle conversation over dinner. In fact, once Danny had served up the meatloaf there wasn't much sound at all besides the scraping of silverware against dishes as they all tucked in. Danny made it halfway through his meal before he set down his fork and sighed.

"So, Bob..."

Bob started, clearly caught off guard, and dropped his fork before snapping off a one handed Nazi salute. "Sieg heil!"

Bob flushed a bit when he saw Danny flinch back and brought his arm around to scratch the back of his head. "I mean, um, nice meatloaf."

"Bob, I really don't know how to say this, so I'll just ask straight out. Are you a Nazi?"

"We prefer Aryan supremacist," Bob began, before stopping when Danny raised a hand to cut him off.

"But you are a member of Empire 88, right?"

"I was, yeah," Bob admitted.

"He really helped-" Taylor said, before Danny cut her off.

"Taylor, I love you very much," Danny said. "That said, I'm really not comfortable letting somebody stay with us who joined the Empire of his own free will."

"My, uh, girlfriend made me join," Bob said, muttering just loud enough for the Heberts to hear him.

"Are you serious?" Somewhat surprisingly, it was Taylor who seemed most skeptical about this claim.

"She's, well, really racist," Bob said.

"I feel like we're not getting the whole story," Danny said, meeting Bob's gaze evenly.

"She's, well, really hot."

Danny kept his eyes on Bob's, and at that moment a sense of understanding passed between them. If they were younger men, they might have bumped fists. In an earlier era, they may have clasped forearms. As it was, Danny limited himself to a simple nod.

"He can stay."

Taylor, for once, elected to keep her mouth shut.

ooOoo

 _Coil checked his notes again after splitting the time line. His trench coat concealed his skeletal frame, as usual. A bandanna hid his facial expression. A pair of aviator glasses concealed his dead gaze. A quick glance around the area confirmed that his targets were alone._

 _His notes mentioned that teenagers were all quite fond of sweets._

 _Coil stepped out from behind the bushes and approached his target. She turned to face him with some trepidation, so Coil gave his best attempt at a reassuring smile. It was probably for the best that his bandanna concealed the resulting expression._

 _"Hey little girl. Do you want some candy?"_

 _The reaction was immediate, albeit unwelcome._

ooOoo


End file.
